- I work for health care, and I'd rather not mention ANY stories about the people I encounter than possibly violate privacy agreements.
- I'd rather my employers not think I spend a lot of time blogging during work hours (I do most of my blog writing during my lunch breaks, FYI).
- Even though I LIKE my job, I don't get a lot of SATISFACTION out of it, so I tend not to have much to say.
I don't care HOW much you like/dislike your current job. Finding out there's room for advancement is a pretty big deal. It's nice to know people like you.
I've been thinking a lot about what I've been doing with my life recently - mainly, that I haven't quite accomplished what I've wanted to since graduating college. I frequently hear that I could do whatever I want to do with my life - and sometimes I believe it. However, it seems like I've recently been seized by I-don't-know-quite-what. Some ghost of complacency, I guess.
I've been working my way through Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The other day I stumbled across the following passage, and I couldn't help but laugh when I read it:
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor... and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
Maybe I'm just too much the typical College of English graduate disaffected with life, but I can relate to what Esther Greenwood felt in this passage (hopefully, that's the ONLY way I relate to Esther - I haven't finished the book quite yet, but I've got a good idea how it ends).
I've got so many things I want to DO with my life, I can't seem to pick just one and focus on it enough to go anywhere with it. I want to be an author, but I can't always bring myself to dedicate the daily effort needed to reach that goal. Same with art and drawing. Heck, this even extends beyond my professional life. Someone asked me the other day if I want to get married some day, and, after thinking about it a minute, I had to say, "I don't think so. I don't know."
Bleagh.
Anyway, it's nice to know that if I CAN'T get out of this funk for whatever reason (although I'd say there's a good reason coming), I still have some room to grow. Thanks, boss!
2 comments:
I've been thinking a lot about this post. I can see why you would be overwhelmed with so many figs to choose, that you are starving to death....but why choose? Why not have a couple bites of each?
I don't believe we have to limit ourselves. I think the idea of choosing one life path over another is antiquated. Take J-Lo, for example. She did not just choose a career as a dancer for In Living Color. She also decided to try a film career, and a music career. Did those things stop her from having a family? No! And she's also a judge on American Idol, and has her own clothing line coming out at Kohl's.
I didn't say, hmm, "Which fig will I eat? The acting fig? The singing fig? The wife and mother fig? The nursing career fig?" I do ALL of those things, and my life is so much richer for it!
That's the great thing about life! We CAN have our cake and eat it too, if we want it. It's not as if you're in the winter of your life, you've got plenty of time to do EVERYTHING!
Don't just choose one fig. Take a bite out of a really juicy one, and then try another one, and another, and another.
Stephen, this is interesting, very. This quote made you think about your complacency and it made me think of my strong desire to move and move and move yet incapacitating fear.
Interesting, interesting...
Post a Comment